Module PHL3002 for 2021/2
- Overview
- Aims and Learning Outcomes
- Module Content
- Indicative Reading List
- Assessment
Undergraduate Module Descriptor
PHL3002: Existentialism
This module descriptor refers to the 2021/2 academic year.
Module Content
Syllabus Plan
Whilst the module’s precise content may vary from year to year, it is envisaged that the syllabus will cover some or all of the following topics:
- Introduction to Existentialism & Soren Kierkegaard
- Friedrich Nietzsche – The Gay Science
- Martin Heidegger – Being & Time – Dasein, Authenticity and being-towards-death
- Jean-Paul Sartre – ‘Existentialism as Humanism’
- Jean-Paul Sartre – Nausea
- Simone de Beauvoir – Feminist Existentialism and The Ethics of Ambiguity
- Simone de Beauvoir – The Blood of Others
- Albert Camus – The Outsider and The Myth of Sisyphus
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky – Notes from Underground
- Frantz Fanon – Black Skins, White Masks
- Ralph Ellison – The Invisible Man
- Soren Kierkegaard – Fear and Trembling and The Sickness Unto Death
Learning and Teaching
This table provides an overview of how your hours of study for this module are allocated:
Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activities | Guided independent study | Placement / study abroad |
---|---|---|
21.5 | 128.5 | 0 |
...and this table provides a more detailed breakdown of the hours allocated to various study activities:
Category | Hours of study time | Description |
---|---|---|
Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activities | 16.5 | 11 x 1.5 hour lectures. Lectures provide you with detailed overview and analysis of key thinkers and texts in the existential tradition; lectures cover more ground than is possible in tutorials, and are designed to establish a context in which to think about the themes, thinkers and texts discussed in tutorials. |
Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activities | 5 | 5 x 1 hour Fortnightly tutorials. A specific reading is assigned, and you are provided with a list of key issues to identify and discuss for each tutorial. Texts are carefully chosen as classic exemplars of the core course themes. |
Guided Independent Study | 45 | Preparation for lectures and tutorial participation including reading and planning. |
Guided independent study | 83.5 | Independent research for glossary entry and essay. |
Online Resources
This module has online resources available via ELE (the Exeter Learning Environment).
This module has online resources available via ELE (the Exeter Learning Environment).
Indicative Reading List
This reading list is indicative - i.e. it provides an idea of texts that may be useful to you on this module, but it is not considered to be a confirmed or compulsory reading list for this module.
Indicative Reading List:
Readings will primarily come from the following two anthologies:
1. Basic Writings of Existentialism, edited by Gordon Marino (Modern Library, 2004)
2.Existentialism Basic Writings, Second Edition, Edited by Charles Guignon and Derk Pereboom (Hackett Publishing, 2001).
Indicative readings will include extracts from the following philosophical and literary works:
- Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness
- Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
- 3. Jean-Paul Sartre, ‘Existentialism is a Humanism’
- 4. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex
- Simone de Beauvoir, The Blood of Others
- Martin Heidegger, Being and Time
- 7. Albert Camus, The Outsider
- Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus
- Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground
- Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science
- Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling
- Soren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death
- Ralph Ellison, The Invisible Man
Selected Secondary Texts:
- A Companion to Phenomenology and Existentialism – edited by H.L. Dreyfus and M.A. Wrathall (Blackwell Publishers)
- The Cambridge Companion to Existentialism – edited by S. Crowell (Cambridge University Press)
- Iris Murdoch – Sartre: Romantic Rationalist
- Iris Murdoch – Essays on “Encountering Existentialism” from Existentialists and Mystics.